How Tarot Works — 78 Cards and the Language of Symbols

A tarot deck contains 78 cards, divided into two groups. One is the 22-card Major Arcana, the other the 56-card Minor Arcana. The word arcana is an old term meaning secrets or hidden things.

The Major Arcana holds 22 cards that capture life’s big themes and turning points: the Fool, the Magician, the Lovers, the Wheel of Fortune, Death, the Sun, and more. When many Major cards appear in a reading, it is often taken to point toward larger currents or significant change.

The 56 cards of the Minor Arcana are sorted into four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. You can think of this structure as similar to the suits in a deck of playing cards.

The four suits are commonly tied to four areas of life. Wands speak to passion and work, Cups to emotion and relationships, Swords to thought and conflict, and Pentacles to money and practical matters. Each suit runs from Ace through Ten and then the court cards (Page, Knight, Queen, King), letting tarot reflect the smaller, everyday turns of life in fine detail.

A tarot card can land upright or reversed. The same card reads differently depending on its orientation. As a general rule, upright suggests that the card’s energy is flowing clearly, while reversed suggests that energy is blocked, turned inward, or redirected.

Reversed does not automatically mean bad, however. It can indicate that an excess is calming down, or point to an inner dimension that is not yet visible on the surface. Because direction is read too, even 78 cards can tell a remarkably wide range of stories.

Tarot is read by placing cards in set positions. This arrangement is called a spread. The simplest is a single card drawn as the theme for the day; a three-card past-present-future spread is also widely used.

What matters in a spread is the meaning assigned in advance to each position. The same card means something different in the present position than in the obstacle position. Reading tarot, then, is the work of weaving together each card’s meaning, the meaning of where it sits, and the flow between the cards into a single coherent story.

Traditional tarot is shuffled and drawn by hand. Because CrossFates is a reading that happens on screen, instead of physically shuffling it computes the spread from your inputs (the date, your birth date and time, and so on) according to a fixed rule.

This means that if the same person looks again on the same day, the same cards appear. The deal is deterministic rather than random, so you can revisit today’s cards tomorrow and place them side by side with the results of other traditions. This is exactly what lets CrossFates gather the outcomes of five Eastern and Western traditions in one place and compute an agreement score.

Tarot is a mirror of symbols for reflection, not a device that announces a settled future. CrossFates’ tarot is for reflection and entertainment, and important choices should always rest on your own judgment and, where needed, professional advice.